Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

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The Happy Corp

The first design was by thehappycorp (who, incidentally have a bright hot pink website — who in their right mind would have a hot pink website?). Now, their design reflects their website –bright. My first thought was, “Ow! This hurts to look at.” My second thought was, “Ow! This is too busy.” I mean, you are talking about people who are going to be staring at that thing for hours at a time and making or losing millions based on what they see on the screen. You aren’t designing for a bunch of kindergarten kids who want to look at zoo animals. The same goes for their layout — too busy and too much.

Now, their news maps are a neat idea, but they seem to take up too much room for too little information. And Market Lava Lamp? Seriously, people. Please use something standard that people can relate to, not your own home-grown hippie visualization tool that looks cool and does little else. And of course, there is the golf game and the health monitor thing. Oh yes, fantastic use of screen real-estate. When I am worried about losing my job, I just need to have one more thing on my monitor telling me just how worked up I am getting. Brilliant. Just who are these guys?

• Design - 5/10
• Layout - 4/10
• Colors - 3/10
• Look and feel - 3/10
• Usability - 4/10
• Innovativeness - 5/10
• Final score - 4/10

IDEO

The second design is by IDEO. Their design is rather nice, and my first thought was that it reminded me of a web interface. While there is a significant amount of content on those terminals, it is not particularly overwhelming. I like their tactile scrolling idea and it is a great concept that is also rather intuitive to most computer users. While the detachable terminals look futuristic, they may just be possible with today’s technology — plug in your Blackberry and take what you need with you. Also, their division of screens is rather well done — the one on the left is for general information and as a user drills down, more information is added to the right. Brilliant. Points for intuitive affordance.

The one thing that I think these guys have done wrong is that they have redesigned it in white. Now, they have said that it is easy on the eyes, but have they worked on a terminal for hours at end? Especially when it is backlit, black tends to be a lot easier on the eyes. And by doing from Black to white, they are breaking an existing interface that the users are used to (your eyes pick things out based on patterns that you learn from experience — when things go the exact opposite way, you have to relearn everything from scratch).

• Design - 8/10
• Layout - 7/10
• Colors - 6/10
• Look and feel - 8/10
• Usability - 8/10
• Innovativeness -7/10
• Final score - 7.3/10

Ziba Design

The third and final design is a company called Ziba Design. The first thing that strikes me when I see their interface is that it reminds me of the older interface, but looks sleeker and nicer. And they have preserved the black background, which is a major plus in their favour. Their moving globe is also rather innovative and it’d be a very interesting feature. I would recommend going with a map, though, since it is probably a lot easier to just click something on a map than rotate something and click on it on a globe (usability etc). The other thing that I liked was the fact that they used colors sparingly and color-coding important information. I think that is a very important thing that none of the others seemed to mention. They graphs and charts are also customizable and seem to be geared towards helping people pick out information easily — a big plus.

Now, the one thing that stuck me about their general interface was that the real-estate could be used a little more effectively. While they aren’t as bad as thehappycorp, they aren’t as efficient as IDEO. But other than that one thing, I like them the best.

• Design - 9/10
• Layout - 6/10
• Colors - 9/10
• Look and feel - 8/10
• Usability - 8/10
• Innovativeness -8/10
• Final score - 8/10

The winner? Ziba Design. Of course, IDEO came very close, but thehappycorp is far, far behind.

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